Same, same, but different
“Jesus did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples”.
Mmm… On first reading of this passage I got a bit cranky. After all, what makes these bods so special that they get to have all the secrets, the inside knowledge revealed to just them?
Doesn’t this two tier system of information smack of inequality and special treatment for some to the exclusion of others? Jesus telling one group of people the broad picture and just a few of his closest buddies get the juicy insider trading meaning. Doesn’t that just take the biscuit!
I wrestled with this seeming injustice and I wrestled hard. Whatever happened to God treating everyone equally. God doesn’t have favorites does He? Until… until I asked myself this.
What if… what if the quiet fireside chat Jesus had with his nearest and dearest was actually like a remedial class for those who were falling behind in their lessons and had trouble “getting it”. Kind of like when I was in secondary school and had to have some special one on one maths tutoring to help me get along. This remedial maths adventure wasn’t that successful, but it was very patient and good of the tutor to try.
So you see how I made a presumption about what was going on with Jesus and his holy huddle? I had assumed that Jesus was passing on elite super insider information, whereas the opposite might have been true. And if it is OK for those motley old fuddy duddies to need a bit of homework then it is certainly OK for us as well. It’s OK not to know all the answers straight away. I reckon parish life has taught me much more than my fleeting abysmal academic career at Theological college. This is a great source of encouragement and liberation for me and I hope that it will be for you as well. It’s very OK to say “I don’t know the answer”.
Further, who am I to critique the way the Master imparted the knowledge and to whom. Surely that is his doing and the fact that we are here all these years later and on the other side of the planet, is a pretty good indication that he got it right and continues to get it right.Scratch just a little deeper and we learn again that we have no idea where others are up to with the closeness or otherwise in their relationship with their Lord. That is between them and their Heavenly Father. We all work out our salvation in our own way, in our own time. For our part all we have to do is cheer and encourage and pray and give each other a loving nudge towards the One who longs to be close to them and to us.
And if I was going to be a little sterner with myself, my little rant might go like this.
That Fr. David you had no right to know what passed between Our Lord and his disciples in private. It was never any of your business and you did not even have a right to speculate. Our Lord will let you know what you need to hear and all you have to do is keep your pretty little head un-fogged from the noise of the day and listen for that still small voice. Self righteousness and being a sticky beak are not the furniture of the Kingdom of heaven.
I rubbed my shaved chin and thought some more. I am the eldest of 4 children and my parents would have treated each one of us just slightly differently. I didn’t feel as though I was a favourite in any way, but my quirks and my foibles and my gifts meant that my parents had to deal with me differently to the other three. The fact that all 4 of us were loved unconditionally was never in question.
You see where this is going right? Perhaps these motley 12 were treated differently because they were … well… different. Further there were some things that my parents would have had to say to each of us siblings that would not be shared or offered to the others. They were not being nasty or exclusivist. They simply knew which words would be best for each one of us. We were all entrusted with our own secrets for our own benefit as well as for the good of the family unit.
And I believe this to be true of the way that our heavenly Father deals with us today. That there are things that he will want to say to us collectively as a parish, as a diocese and as a church. But there are also things that He will want to say to us that are strictly private, strictly personal. His words, his cajoling, his rebukes, his endearments are just for us and we are to take them to heart and act accordingly.
So what if today he says to you very personally... “You are my beloved child, I rejoice in you. Know this and rejoice in Me.”